If comments by the head of the Copyright Alliance are any indication of things to come, it's going to be difficult, indeed, for video game consumers to have an intelligent and productive dialogue on IP issues with the video game industry. The ESA, which represents U.S. video game publishers, is a member of the copyright lobbying group.

A portion of a recent blog entry by Copyright Alliance executive director Patrick Ross seeks to marginalize those who would question or criticize the current state of IP law. Ross displays a discouraging mentality reminiscent of the Bush administration's efforts to paint Iraq War critics as soft on national defense.

Copyright truly is a consensus issue, with people and policymakers of all stripes recognizing its value. A few vocal blogs and a few sympathetic media outlets tend to create this notion of a war between creative industries and, well, I suppose consumers, but such a war doesn’t really exist.

The Copyright Alliance head implies that if one does not get behind IP protection as the content industry sees it, then one is either on the fringe, supportive of piracy, or both. In other words, If you're not with us, you're against us.

That's nonsense.

Honest people don't support piracy. But neither do honest people wish - or deserve - to live in an IP police state where tech-challenged elected officials accept IP industry campaign donations and proceed to pass laws that are heavily, if not completely, slanted toward big business.

You know, I've written to EA (and now these dudes) thanking them for treating me like a criminal, despite having a clean record. I've never pirated anything in my life. But it sure makes me want to. Either way, if everyone writes these guys... would it do anything? Or would they still treat the masses (the innocent ones, at that) as common thieves?

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"Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedom

Heh, well, that comment right there shows exactly how worried they are about the fact that consumers are catching on to their tricks. Fortunately, Jedi Mind-Tricks don't work so well on an entire consumer base.

In my opinion, IP content security is driving at breakneck speed down a deadend road. The future of IP control will be with applications like Steam where you don't have a physical copy of your software on you, but its accessible anywhere in the world once you purchase the right to use it.

For all of the (technical) problems that Steam may have, I believe the above is its greatest strength.

Well that’s half right although Steam likes to be online to much for my tastes what IP control needs to learn is not to restrict the “SP” side of things let people install a limited install of a product and be able to play it without ever going online, the instant you go online you have to jump through a couple of simple hurdles but get more content instantly, the trouble is the industry sees anything with “offline compatibility” as a liability and just refuses to take their head out of their ass and see what profit that can be made vrs the profits they are trying to force. I do not like steam myself as it’s to restrictive and the instant I got the orange box used I downloaded a steamless version I simply refuse to put up with any restrictive DRM regardless of who’s it from.

Once you link a game or install to an online server its over IMO you can not limit a game in such away unless its a MMO but for everything else online only is fail…

When I buy a game I want it in a box that I can carry with me. If games go down a road where the consumer has to purchase 'rights' to play games - rights that we have to trust software developers to keep safe for us, I won't be going down that road with them.

When I buy something, I should get to keep it and resell it if I want to. Anything less is a rental, and rentals are for chumps.

Only until my hard drive dies. With a game disc, as long as I keep it unscratched I can carry that thing forever. Even if I do scratch it, I should be able to fix it. I just don't see why I should have any limits on my purchases and I'm not going to trust game companies who trust me so little that they force me to install annoying (even Steam is annoying) anti-piracy measures that I don't want.

At which point, since you're using Steam, you log in and download it again once you buy a new hard drive. In fact, you can install your games on a billion hard drives. You just can't be logged in to your account in more than one location at once.

I'm not a blogger, nor am I posting on behalf of a media outlet. I'm just a consumer and I'm on the consumer side of a war that was started by software companies who want me to rent products that I ought to be able to buy. I've never once pirated a game yet I'm called a pirate by these DRM advocates. Why is it that the folks who are on the attack always insist they aren't engaged in warfare?

Personally, I've cut back my game-buying to a virtual standstill (I used to buy two games per month, but now I'm buying about two games per year - and I'm usually careful to make sure that the products I buy are from an honest source like Stardock) because I don't feel I can trust game companies anymore. As things stand I really don't see why I should give money to folks who are fighting against my interests.

Actually, such a war does exist, and you are fighting us. I am one of the ones that would like to play some of the new games, but refuse due to some of the extreme DRM issues. The people you are getting your information from are lying to you. Gamers are some of the most connected people in the world, we all talk to eachother, across many websites, and the outrage is only growing. Online activation is onerous enough, but some of the more draconian practices will need to go, or the games that have them will begin to see less and less sales.

If you are only renting us the game and keep the right to take it away from us at any time, then I expect to pay a lot less for what is essentially, not mine anymore. I shouldn't need to check with you every time I want to play my game again. In addition, selling partial games, then making people pay to unlock stuff that already exists on the disc and that they already purchased with the disc should be illegal. Most EULA terms should be illegal.

You and your kind have been running roughshod over your consumers for too long. Shortly, more and more of the population will be people who grew up gaming, and your lobbying will not be able to keep these ugly truths under wraps any longer.

The gamers will rise, and we wil take over this country the way that the founding fathers intended, and there isn't anything you can do to stop us.

Actually, I think technically a lot of EULA terms are already illegal, we've just yet to see them challenged in court on a large enough scale to cause changes in the way they're worded and set up. If the company can bully you into complying with their terms by forcing you to agree to an unenforceable TOU, why should they bother making an enforceable one?

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Debates are like merry go rounds.
Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

Uh, yah, me too please. I'd kind of like to send him my comment and see what the response is... if any. Chances are, now that I think about it, there won't be a response, he likely doesn't give a shit.

The irony is that honest consumers like myself are now being tempted to turn to piracy to avoid these issues. I'd rather deal with the crap that comes with a pirated game than DRM because, at the very least, I know the bugs that I might get from those illegal games are bugs that I can handle and deal with.

Why should I bother? If the industry that builds the games that are my life-long passion is going to treat me like a thieving criminal and mess with my system and if there's going to be two sets of rules then why shouldn't I just go ahead and grab some pirated games?

It's not like they're going to go after me, the single, lone user who grabs the odd game, especially if I'm destroying the copy when I'm finished with it and not stock-piling them. Not only will I get to play the game, but I don't have to worry about EA or Activision or Atari or whoever putting what basically amounts to a trojan on sector zero of my HDD (an act, by the way, that is ILLEGAL for anyone else... but somehow when couched in terms of IP protection is perfectly allowable for big, multi-billion dollar, multi-national corporations).

And given that I'm perfectly willing to pay for the games that I want, when I want them... instead of paying the company that made them, I'll just download them pirated and donate the money to charity.

As sad as it is I have to agree with this ... if you treat your consumer as the thief then why should they keep raging aginst your expectations instead they should take the mantle you have thrusted upon them and become the villian you so desire. (the you here of course being the DRM loving companies such as EA).

I have given up a lot of good games that I would have loved to show my support for by purchasing whose DRM alone made me go screw it never mind (Spore, DeadSpace, Mass Effect, and BioShock)

Copyright is an antiquated term past its prime you can no longer bully the populace over what they “hear” or what they “say” the only thing you can do is limit illicit profit by going after real criminals and sell cheaper at higher volumes to the world as a whole region to do anything more than these 2 things is to prove your incompetence, welcome to the 22th century!

Aw, thank you. I am happy to be in the 22nd century. Here, let me bend over and pull down my pants, now tell him to do his thing. You know, I am not gay, but since the corporate world said that taking it up the ass nice and hard was what was right for the consumer... I figured I should do what is right. My friend Mr. Slave loves this type of stuff. I think he does it daily by these corporate guys even. Ow baby... ouch... whoa... Oh my God no more... No make it stop! God please... Oh no, no, no, nooooooooooooooooooooooooo....

I think it is messed up how far companies are going with their malicious protection software that sometimes the consumer is not even aware of. I haven't played a PC game in years, and frankly I am glad because I for one don't want to spend a weekend fragging my harddrive and reinstalling everything just to get my computer to work properly again.

"I don't know many things but I know if you press up up down down left right left right a b start you get infinite lives in contra"

"I don't know many things but I know if you press up up down down left right left right a b start you get infinite lives in contra"

Got close. It was B A start, unless your talking Gyrus with was D,D,U,U,R,L,R,L,A,B,START. Ahh yes the Konami Code. Even mentioned in MGS3. You have to love a company that remember's it's past, and some of it's newer Contra games still use it for extra continues.

I think the funny thing is that these guys are doing all of this crap to drop resale of games at places like EB and GameStop, but I can't find a God damn copy of Fallout or Fallout 2 anywhere, as well as other games. So I have to blame the developers for fucking themselves over on their long term profit, because they could be making a shit load more.

Such a great site and good deal. Got both Fallouts since I'd never played them before. Both are amazing.

They're also slowly gathering more steam, getting more and more companies signed on. I really like the fact that they go through the trouble of optimizing each game to work on XP/Vista, taking out all the hassle and headache of having to figure it out yourself. Only had to just download, install, and Robert's your father's brother.

They also don't advertise this on their sign up screen so you've already paid your subscription fee and cursed out their tech support before they bother to tell you about their own technical limitations. This, in my opinion, is not okay. I will not be giving them any more of my money... despite their amazing collection of sierra and infocom games *sniff*

Copy protection, publish then patch, and the upgrade treadmill are why I gave up PC gaming going on 8 years now.

Systems are getting powerful enough that I can run some of my old games in emulation, without touching the real box (emulation, not virtualization, my only curent computers are PPC ), I'll probably be getting around to finishing them finally.

Infophile: @Matt: Apparently Dan Aykroyd actually is involved. We don't know how yet, though, but he's apparently going to be in the movie in some way.08/02/2015 - 4:17am

Mattsworkname: I still hold that not having the origonal cast invovled in any way hurts this movie, and unless the 4 actresses in the lead roles can some how measure up to the comic timing of the origonal cast, i just don't see it being a success08/02/2015 - 12:46am

Mattsworkname: Mecha: regardless of what you think of it, GB 2 was a finanical success and for it time did well with audiances ,even if it wasnt as popular as the first08/02/2015 - 12:45am

MechaTama31: I think they're better off trying to do something different, than trying to be exactly the same and having every little difference held up as a shortcoming. Uncanny valley.08/01/2015 - 11:57pm

MechaTama31: Having the original cast didn't do much for... that pink-slimed atrocity which we must never speak of.08/01/2015 - 11:56pm

Mattsworkname: Andrew: If the new ghostbusters bombs, I cant help but feel it'll be cause it removed the origonal cast and changed the formula to much08/01/2015 - 8:31pm

Andrew Eisen: Not the best look but that appears to be a PKE meter hanging from McCarthy's belt.08/01/2015 - 7:34pm

Mattsworkname: You know what game is a lot of fun? rocket league. It' s a soccer game thats actually fun to play cause your A Freaking CAR!08/01/2015 - 7:02pm

Mattsworkname: Nomad colossus did a little video about it, showing the world and what can be explored in it's current form. It's worth a look, and he uses text for commentary as not to break the immerison08/01/2015 - 5:49pm

Mattsworkname: I feel some more mobility would have made it more interesting and I feel that a larger more diverse landscape with better graphiscs would help, but as a concept, it interests me08/01/2015 - 5:48pm

Andrew Eisen: Huh. I guess I'll have to check out a Let's Play to get a sense of the game.08/01/2015 - 5:47pm

Mattsworkname: It did, I found the idea of exploring a world at it's end, exploring the abandoned city of a disappeared alien race and the planets various knooks and crannies intriqued me.08/01/2015 - 5:46pm

Andrew Eisen: Did it appeal to you? If so, what did you find appealing?08/01/2015 - 5:43pm